Hot, heavy-thick air this late-afternoon Wednesday here in California’s Central Valley — we’re right now at 104 degrees, with all indications tomorrow will be much higher (112) — and maybe working our way to the end of this nasty, cruel heat-domed influenced boil for the past couple of weeks.
We’re in an ‘Excessive Heat Watch‘ until Saturday morning (beyond next weekend temps to remain in triple-digits, however).

Infecting the horrid actual, physical sweltering heat outside, the political shit on the inside everywhere all at once is even worse — making shitty days even way-more shitty. All the hammered media blitz about Joe Biden since that freaking debate is a horrible, anxiety-inducing phenomenon that’s a public spectacle, or maybe a bright shinning object, to make America’s eyes off the main subject right now — the terrible, frightful T-Rump and the quickly-approaching election.
No matter what George Clooney has to say, the T-Rump is the main featured story by far — if you want to get an example of just how far-fucked T-Rump and the MGA-induced disaster go read Charles P.Pierce’s post at Esquire this afternoon. It’s a short, direct punch piece on T-Rump’s rally in Florida last night and the brain-drain horror of nonsense blubbered out loud. Conclusion: ‘The presidential candidate whose mental acuity has not been the obsession of the national political media for the past two weeks appears to have a firm command of reality.‘

Of course, Pierce is being being way-way sarcastic. And Joe Biden is too old? Describing T-Rump as unfit for office is what’s really, really called an ‘understatement.’ Apparently, the Joe-Average voter really knows more than the media elite:

For what it's worth (maybe not much right now, given the news), the polls appear to have stopped moving against Biden. If it was Election Day, with R+2 nationally R+3 in PA, Biden would be a normal polling miss away from winning the Electoral College https://t.co/cdR35ysBkE pic.twitter.com/gwV67cnxGp

— G Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris) July 10, 2024

Media editor/writer Margaret Sullivan at the Guardian yesterday noted the over-bright light on Biden:

It’s possible for two conflicting ideas to be true at once.

And so it is with the mainstream media’s unrelenting focus on Joe Biden’s mental acuity, following his terrible debate performance earlier this month.

First truth: the president’s stumble and the political fallout that followed is a huge, consequential news story that deserves a lot of coverage.

Second truth: the media coverage is overkill – not only too much in quantity and too breathless in tone, but also taking up so much oxygen that a story even more important is shoved to the back burner.

That bigger story, of course, is the former president’s appalling unfitness for office, not only because he tried to overturn a legitimate election and is a felon, out on bail and awaiting sentencing, but because of things he has said and done in very recent weeks. As just one example, he claimed that he doesn’t know anything about Project 2025, the radical rightwing plan hatched by some of his closest allies to begin dismantling our democracy if he wins another term.

Sullivan also concludes, but without the sarcasm:

Of course, the problem certainly is not just the New York Times, despite its agenda-setting influence. It’s also TV news, both network and cable. And, to a lesser extent, it’s other major US publications.

Where does that leave us?

All of these disturbing elements – the Democrats’ dilemma, the media’s failures, and the cult-like, unquestioning support of Trump – could add up to one likelihood in November.

A win for Trump, and a terrible loss for democracy.

Rebecca Solnit noted a similar view in a post last Saturday, also at the Guardian — main point:

Biden is old. He was one kind of appalling in the 27 June debate, listless and sometimes stumbling and muddling his words. But Trump was another kind of appalling, in that almost everything he said was an outrageous lie and some of it was a threat. I get that writing about the monstrosity that is Trump faces the problem that it’s not news; he’s been a monster spouting lurid nonsense all his life (but his political crimes are recent, and his free-associating public soliloquies on sharks, batteries, toilets, water flow and Hannibal Lector, among other topics, are genuinely demented). He’s a racist, a fascist and a rapist (according to a civil-court verdict).

We are deciding whether this nation has a future as a more-or-less democratic republic this November, and on that rides the fate of the earth when it comes to acting on climate change. If the US falters at this decisive moment in the climate crisis, it will drag down everyone else’s efforts. Under Trump, it will. But the shocking supreme court decisions this summer and the looming threat of authoritarianism have gotten little ink and air, compared to the hue and cry about Biden’s competence.

Another one of those ‘Can’t see the forest for the trees,’ however, in this case, those ‘trees‘ are terrifying monsters coming to destroy us all.

Memory:

Deflection, or not, yet here we are once again…

(Image out front: ‘Art Critic’ by Norman Rockwell, found here.)